Kimba Wood

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Kimba Maureen Wood (born 1944 in Port Townsend, WA)^[1] is a U.S. federal judge. A graduate of Connecticut College (B.A., 1965), London School of Economics, (M.Sc., 1966) and Harvard Law School (J.D., 1969), Wood was nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by Ronald Reagan in 1987 and was confirmed by a unanimous Senate. She has been the Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York since August 1, 2006.

One of Judge Wood's most famous decisions was sentencing Michael Milken, known as "The Junk Bond King", in 1990 to ten years in prison; the sentence was reduced to two years imprisonment and three years probation in 1991.

Judge Wood was Bill Clinton's second unsuccessful nominee for attorney general in 1993. Like Clinton's previous nominee, Zoe Baird, Wood had hired an illegal immigrant as a nanny; although, unlike Baird, she had paid the required taxes on the employee and had broken no laws, the threat of a repetition of the same controversy ultimately led to a withdrawal of the nomination. Janet Reno was later nominated and confirmed for the post. During the vetting process for her nomination to be U.S. Attorney General, it was also noted that Ms. Wood had considered a job as a Playboy Bunny in her youth.

Later, in 1998, Judge Wood presided over the case of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem v. Christie's, Inc., in which the ownership of the Archimedes Palimpsest was disputed. Judge Wood also later presided over Leonard v. Pepsico, Inc., 88 F. Supp 2d 116 (S.D.N.Y. 1996), more widely known as the Pepsi Points Case.

Judge Wood has also served on the Amherst College Board of Trustees, ended her term in 2001.^[2]